Grayscale filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday 20 Jul for a spot Worldcoin exchange-traded fund, days after the token touched an all-time low, and shortly after layoffs at its lead developer, Tools for Humanity, had dragged the price down further.
Grayscale Seeks First US Worldcoin ETF Despite Token's Steep Losses
21 July 2026 - 17:50 CEST
By Stu Clelland
The proposed fund, to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker GWLD, would hold WLD directly and track its price through the CoinDesk Worldcoin Benchmark Rate. BitGo would custody the tokens, and BNY Mellon would act as administrator and transfer agent. Grayscale formed the trust on 10 Jul and filed the registration just ten days later. The management fee and initial seed investment are both left blank in the prospectus, typical for an early-stage filing.
Fund's own numbers cut against the timing
Grayscale's prospectus discloses that WLD's index price ranged from $0.24 to $1.83 over the twelve months to 30 Jun, averaging $0.67. WLD closed Monday at $0.38, having opened the session at around $0.36, meaning the fund is being registered with the token trading more than 40% below its own one-year average and about 97% below its all-time high of $11.96. Shares of Eightco Holdings (ORBS), the largest corporate holder of WLD, closed Monday's session roughly flat at $0.58, but were trading at about $0.61 in premarket activity as of 13:00UTC on Tuesday, up close to 5% from that close.
Sandmark has asked Grayscale to comment on the timing of the filing and will update this article if a response is received.
Risks the prospectus discloses in detail
Grayscale's own filing is candid about the token's structural weaknesses. It discloses that the 100 largest WLD wallets held approximately 90% of circulating supply as of the filing date, and that token unlocks for the initial development team and early investors continue on daily schedules without cliffs, with substantially all such tokens expected to be unlocked by approximately Jul 2028.
It also details a string of regulatory actions against Worldcoin's biometric verification system, the Orb device used to scan users' irises and issue free WLD tokens. Data protection authorities in Spain and Portugal ordered temporary suspensions of Orb data collection in 2024; Germany's Bavarian data authority ordered corrective measures the same year; Hong Kong ordered Orb operations to cease in May 2024; Brazil ordered a halt to WLD-for-biometric-data compensation in January 2025; Kenya's High Court found the practice violated the country's data protection law in May 2025; and Indonesia suspended the project's operations that same month. The filing separately notes that WLD user grants have historically not been available in some jurisdictions, including, during certain periods, the United States, with Thailand going further in February 2026 by declaring the iris-scanning practice illegal.
Part of a broader pattern for Grayscale
The filing continues a run of altcoin ETF launches for Grayscale, which converted its flagship Bitcoin trust into an ETF in 2024 after winning a court case against the SEC, and has since filed for or launched funds tracking Ether, Dogecoin, Solana, XRP, Litecoin and Chainlink.
The fund cannot begin trading until the registration takes effect and WLD clears the SEC processes and Nasdaq's own listing requirements for the token. Traditional SEC clearance takes up to 240 days, though a rule change approved in Sept 2025 shortened the approval process for eligible crypto exchange-traded products to 75 days. The earliest GWLD could start trading is, therefore, Q4 2026.
